The first lesson learned is that to compete with the bigger clubs they couldn’t do it on the same terms (ie. Sign big stars to big money contracts). Quite simply the richer clubs had greater reserves to play with. A poor club had to look to sign young players and older players that the market had undervalued. Oakland’s management disregarded what they believed were major fallacies in conventional statistical analysis. A big hitting superstar, for example may show little patience and be less effective than a seemingly mediocre hitter who could induce a high amount of ‘walks’ (a way of getting onto first base – a potential run scoring position – without having to hit the ball, at the expense of the pitcher). Likewise, a player who could play unbelievable defence may be seriously overvalued if he couldn’t hit the ball when batting. Quite simply Oakland found a way of consistently unearthing cheap gems. Sorry for too much baseball speak.

So back to the football analogy. Oakland’s marketing studies showed that the main thing their fans cared about was winning. Win with nobodies and the fans showed up, and the nobodies became stars; lose with stars, and the fans stayed home, and the stars became nobodies. Assembling a team of stars into a ruthlessly efficient team, with the nobodies becoming stars, was a source of great pleasure for a poor club. Any difference there?

Every season management looked at what they saw as a mathematical problem (how many wins to make the play-offs, how many runs need generated, etc….) that in football terms would see Sandy Stewart look at things and ask “how many wins, points, goals to score, how few to concede, etc..”. In football you need only to look at a league table to see it’s the side with the greater goal difference that usually wins. Last season Falkirk’s goal difference was 36 goals, double that of nearest challengers St. Mirren. Last season Airdrie’s goal difference was minus 4. Airdrie had scored 3 more goals than second placed St. Mirren but had conceded over twice as many (48 as opposed to 23).

Unfortunately statistical analysis of football is really primitive and the game still seems to rely heavily on the hoary old chestnut – gut feeling. Most of us have it (ancient Chinese medicine theorises that we have two brains – the one in our head, the other in our stomach) but do our eyes often deceive us? Unfortunately without any reliable data and only unconvincing eyewitness recollections it’s difficult to use past performance to predict what a certain bunch of players will do in the coming season. The Oakland management can rely on past records of potential players to accurately ‘guess’ future performance. But necessity forced them to look at scoring production from a different angle to give them an edge over their richer rivals. They broke down every game situation and worked out formulae to give every play what they deemed a ‘expected run value’. Every hit, walk, fielding catch/error, etc. all had positive and negative values. For example if a hitter managed to hit well enough to make it to second base they predicted there was maybe a one in two chance he’d eventually score a run. By the same token if a fielder dropped, or couldn’t make, a routine catch his team would suffer the same percentages…

In football terms, whether he’s relying on gut instinct or whether he has some kind of data on his players, SS has already stated that he’s looking to bring in a couple of defenders to address our shocking goals against total. Being stingy at the back will be the first area needing addressed. Airdrie lost a lot of goals last season that Sandy wouldn’t have been happy with and he’ll know himself what’s needed. Finding a couple of defenders that the market has undervalued will be his most difficult task but they will be out there. In terms of creating ‘expected goal value’ situations is his other major task. In recent years Celtic have probably been the best proponents of a ‘Moneyball’ philosophy. Watch them play for free kicks around the box, with their dead-ball experts and you’ll realise that they know the chances of scoring from those situations is high. With Brian McPhee allegedly signed, and Willie McLaren now our other main striker, it may be that SS has theorised that our highest ‘expected goal value’ will be via speedy strikers being played in on one v. one situations. We’ll see!

Bottom line for me is that though we may be seemingly struggling a bit, the future should never as bleak as it may look through some eyes. If we’re dealt a poor deck, it’s still possible to upset the odds. As Billy Beane and Paul Deposta of Oakland are testimony: Superior management will run rings round higher piles of cash. I hope Sandy Stewart and Jim Ballantyne aren’t down at the moment. You don’t need to spend a fortune to compete when all you need is to be smarter. Remember, the fans only care about winning!